Hut site, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Baile Na Bhfionnúrach, Co. Kerry

On the crest of a ridge running south-west from Brandon Mountain, in County Kerry, two small circular stone huts sit within the remains of an old field system, their walls still holding together after what may be many centuries of Atlantic weather.

These are corbelled drystone huts, a construction technique in which courses of flat stone are laid so that each slightly overhangs the one below, eventually meeting at the top to form a self-supporting dome without mortar or timber. It is a method found repeatedly across the Dingle Peninsula, and it produces structures that are at once extremely simple and quietly ingenious.

The two huts differ in scale and detail in ways that suggest distinct functions or perhaps different phases of use. The smaller of the pair, roughly 2.25 metres in diameter and 2 metres high, has a modest rectangular enclosure abutting its south-east side and a single niche set into its interior wall. The second hut is considerably larger, at 4.5 metres in diameter, and considerably more complex: its lintelled entrance faces west-south-west and leads into a rectangular yard, roughly 9 by 5.5 metres, which is thought to be a later addition rather than part of the original design. Inside, six small wall niches are distributed around the interior, and opposite the entrance a chamber roughly 2 metres long is built partly into the thickness of the wall itself and partly extends beneath the ground outside. Nearby stand the ruins of two further possible structures, as well as four roughly-built sheep-pens and shelters, suggesting that the whole group formed a working upland enclosure rather than a site of purely ceremonial or domestic character. The survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region compiled by J. Cuppage and published in 1986 recorded the complex as part of a broader archaeological landscape on the peninsula, one in which similar corbelled structures recur with enough frequency to indicate a long tradition of this kind of mountain-edge building.

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